A genetics term that refers to how the whole is the result of the workings of a bunch of different parts

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Who has my Vortexer? The factory.

Well, I was finally able to talk to those in the know, and the vortexer was never ordered. Thankfully it's a several-hundred, as opposed to a several-thousand dollar piece of equipment, or I might not have been able to just order one yesterday. Money's getting tight here at the end of the fiscal year.

Probably like a lot of places, we can't order supplies or equipment from the end of July until the beginning of October, due to efforts to balance the books at that time. I'll need to inventory my stuff and make sure I have enough to do everything I'm supposed to do.

I did get the specimens' DNA extracted and PCR'd yesterday, and will check the PCR products on an agarose gel today. Then I'll run the PCR product through a kit that cleans out the unwanted reagents and use another kit to introduce the PCR fragments into bacterial vectors, as I begin the process of cloning and sequencing these fragments.

In other news, I'm finally meeting with someone to deal with my tree lawn, which looks horrible, as I have herbicided the grass and stopped watering. I just can't do the digging myself, so I'm taking bids from a couple of companies to install RR ties around the edge of the tree lawn, and I'll buy and haul mulch to cover it all up. It will be nice not to cringe a little every time I look at it.